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FreeBSD Archives

July 4, 2003

Doctor StrangeCrash...or How I Learned to NOT Love IDE RAID

Well, my great idea of using an IDE RAID controller to mirror one of my servers blew up in my face today, when the primary harddrive failed the system slowly died. Sadly, the IDE RAID controller decided to stop mirroring drives months ago, so I'm left with only backups...and those were works in progress, so I don't have everything. *pouts* What is especially troubling...I can't get physical access to the server until Monday 'cause of the holiday weekend.

UPDATE: Everything but a few personal files have been restored...whew!

October 1, 2004

Fire and Ice

Funny on a such a cold day JManDoo and I have been working on firewalls!

Thanks to the efforts of Max Laier we got a pair of CARP/PF/PFSync FreeBSD 5.3-BETA6 firewalls up and running. Just completed the rest of the configuration today, everything appears to work great. We’ve got a simple lab setup running, but we’re eager to throw some real load at it next week.

October 27, 2004

Gumby Day

Sounds like Mike is going to have some free time today, so I’m taking a half-day and we’re gonna work at getting the new Gumby server up and running.

I’ve had the new server for the last 5 months or so, but I’ve been putting off building it up until the FreeBSD 5.x series was marked stable. It looks like this is a reality, or at least will be shortly, so we should be able to build up the box and start tracking 5-STABLE with it.

All kinds of goodness will come forth from this…more disk space, new versions of all the hosted software, including MovableType 3.1x for the blogs. Yay!

Updates throughout the day. Not sure if we’ll cut over to the new box or we’ll just set it up and schedule switchover a few weeks out. Depends on how seamless we can do it.

Finale of Gumby Day

Well, Gumby didn’t get completely finished tonight. There were a few problems getting Gumby up and running to begin with…then Mike and I got distracted numerous times chitchatting about all things geek.

Good progress was made. And it was great to spend a geek afternoon/evening with Mike.

June 8, 2005

Power...We Need More Power

I finally drifted off to sleep last night around 2am. As my eyelids began to droop, I got to watch quite the show outside as the winds and rain battered the outside the apartment window. Lightning all over, trees being whipped back and forth by the wind, it was all there.

I wake up around 6:30am. I can’t read the clock…not all that unusual in the morning, due to the light coming in the window glaring off its display. Walk over to the bathroom…the light doesn’t work! Sure ‘nuff, the entire apartment is out. I checked the only wall-powered mechanical clock I have in the apartment, on the stove, and find out the power went out shortly before 4:00am. To eliminate the possibility that the power issue was contained within the apartment (circuit breakers, etc) I opened the door to the hallway…yup, only the bright red EXIT sign illuminated the hallway.

September 8, 2005

Some Notes For Googlers

WARNING: PURE GEEK POST AHEAD. CONSIDER TAKING EVASIVE ACTION.

Over the past week I’ve setup two different heavy-iron machines (or, at least they were when they were initially purchased) with FreeBSD. Uncharacteristically, I’ve run into a few issues I thought I’d share so that others will not waste all the time I have troubleshooting, since this post will inevitably make its way into Google’s index.

December 14, 2005

Ketchup

Wow, I’ve only posted 4 times since November 1st. What’s wrong with me? Has my life become that boring?

Yes, in many ways I suppose. Been busy working on a huge project at work…been taking up the vast majority of my time. A few weeks over the past month-and-a-half I’ve been only at home to sleep, shower and dress.

There have been a few highlights of the past few weeks, tho. The project referred to above is quickly coming together, I’m nearly done handing over the project to our operations group, letting me move on to other things. Thanksgiving went wonderfully with everyone together, the turkey turned out perfect, the rest of the food was equally delicious. Continued good luck at Pub Trivia nights, even took a second place after a bitter triple-elimination following a three-way tie for first. Went to the Barenaked Ladies Holiday concert, along with everyone I know…least it seemed that way. Got Gumby/Pokey installed finally this past weekend…which is why you’re seeing a new style here. Still need to tweak it, add the menu back, get the rest of my pages fixed, but it will do for now.

There have been a few lows as well. My Beetle ended up needing to make a visit to the car doctors at Westside VW. The oil pressure light began flashing whenever it was running faster than idle…the cause was a clogged oil pickup tube. A couple hundred for the diagnosis and fix…but I can’t complain too much, only have 2 more payments left, then the car is completely mine. I figure for 2-3 months worth of payments I can restore my good ‘ol Beetle back into a decent shape, ready for another 50k miles or more.